SNEAK PEEK: Dark Knight Returns animated movie

I didn’t “get” how powerful comics could be until I read The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller way back in the mid-80s. It is a massive story that seems almost impossible to adapt to a movie, but Warner Home Video is planning to do it with a two part movie coming later this year.

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The Author

Stephen Schleicher

Stephen Schleicher began his career writing for the Digital Media Online community of sites, including Digital Producer and Creative Mac covering all aspects of the digital content creation industry. He then moved on to consumer technology, and began the Coolness Roundup podcast. A writing fool, Stephen has freelanced for Sci-Fi Channel's Technology Blog, and Gizmodo. Still longing for the good ol' days, Stephen launched Major Spoilers in July 2006, because he is a glutton for punishment.

You can follow him on Twitter @MajorSpoilers and tell him your darkest secrets...

The books were fantastic and changed the industry – the dark and gritty scene really got its start with Dark Knight Returns – and major changes such as making Robin a girl became acceptable. And it was really the first time that an “outsider” who wasn’t working on the mainstream books was allowed to fiddle with a publisher’s top ranked properties. It’s interesting to look back and see just how many elements that were first shown in Dark Knight and Kingdom Come have filtered through into mainstream books.
I wonder, though, how the art style will translate to animation. The unique art and minimalist backgrounds were an integral part of the storytelling of Dark Knight, and on previous WB animations where the source material had a unique art style the animators weren’t able to pull it off. Especially Superman/Batman: Apokalipse where the animation turned out rather grotesque compared to the comic and instead of Supergirl appearing stunningly cute like in the book she ended up looking rather slutty and cheap instead.
My instincts tell me that the Dark Knight will be a disappointment. They’ll most likely sanitize the story a bit too much and the art won’t be satisfying either. But I might well be wrong, after all, I thought that the Lord of the Rings was unfilmable and Peter Jackson proved me wrong in a big way.

During Batman: The Animated Series, there was a Tales of the Dark Knight episode where three children told their interpretation of Batman, and one of them was The Dark Knight Returns, done in the Miller style, and it worked. It worked very well.